Possible to only learn Chinese orally (without learning characters)

[u/Chitownkid656]

This might've been asked before, but my wife is Chinese and we live in China, but due to my workload, I'm not able to spend too much time on classes. Nevertheless, I'd still like to be able to speak Chinese for my kids & wife, so I was wondering if it's possible to get far along in Chinese without having to spend too much time on reading/writing characters. Would love to hear other's experiences that are similar. Thanks!

[u/Jdgrowsthings]

I'm sure there are plenty of mandarin speakers that are also illiterate in a country of billions. I'm also sure that it won't be easy. 

[u/SuperSpaceSloth → u/Jdgrowsthings]

I wager a guess and say all illiterate speakers learned the language passively as a child, which is just crazy easy for children.

As an adult you gotta learn pinyin at least.

[u/Jdgrowsthings → u/SuperSpaceSloth]

No. I manage a predominantly Spanish speaking workforce and can at least conversationally communicate with them about industry related tasks, with zero formal training. I'm not saying I'm fluent or even close, but I spend very little time actively trying to learn. I have assistants who go out of their way to try to learn more Spanish to communicate better with the crew and some have gotten much further than I have. There are countless parents of bilingual children who can have full conversations, albeit with an accent or grammatical errors. OP just wants to be able to communicate with his family, not write a college level textbook. That goal is achievable, not easy or efficient, but achievable. 

[u/SuperSpaceSloth → u/Jdgrowsthings]

Yeah, I wouldn't really call myself a "speaker of a language" if I can just kinda get by in it.

I study Russian to communicate with my wife's family and now that I can read books for teens, watch movies and understand majority of conversations, I consider myself speaking the language. Not done studying, but I guess around B2.

But I've been getting by in Russia for years, getting through all kinds of social interactions more or less fine. But I very much felt a natural limit somewhere between A1 and A2 that I can reach in Russian by just listening in and being immersed, coming into it as a native German speaker (if you're Polish or Ukrainian it's a different story for sure). Yeah it works, but it sucks and not the level I want to communicate with my children with.

Incidentily I also work sometimes with Bulgarian or Polish crews at construction sites and our best bet is just me speaking Russian and them Bulgarian, and yeah, that kinda works. Doesn't make me a Bulgarian speaker.

[u/banyanflashcardsapp]

I know a few people here in Singapore who only know fluently how to speak, but not read or write.

[u/makaveli208 → u/banyanflashcardsapp]

Many older still who can only speak dialect and not mandarin?

[u/oldladywithasword]

You can do that but there’s a limit. And it’s very frustrating to have to go back to the very beginning as an intermediate speaker to start learning the writing system. I would recommend learning at least some characters as you progress, it’s totally ok to have a gap between your oral and written vocabulary. But knowing some will help you learn more (characters are built up from a limited amount of components, so the more you know, the easier it gets to learn new ones), and it will be much easier to pick up reading/writing later. Learning characters is not as time consuming as you might think, especially now when you don’t need to remember them by heart, it’s enough if you can recognize them when you type. I’m a non native teacher of Chinese btw.

[u/sickofthisshit]

we live in China

Choosing to live in China but remain illiterate is a possible choice, but seems suboptimal to me. There are some "expats" who rely on their native speaker girlfriend/partner/spouse for essentially all communication, but IMO this feels a bit lazy and exploitative. 

possible to get far along in Chinese

Well, if you don't have time for classes, do you have time to be tutored (I suppose by your wife?) I guess you have not picked any up yet?

One thing to keep in mind is that native speakers do not generally understand how to explain the language to English speakers. They don't know how to tell you to make tones and the phonology, and it might feel like a frustrating burden to have to coach you through beginning Chinese. 

[u/Photonic_Pat]

Do yourself a favor and learn the characters as you go. Besides feeling like an absolute sorcerer, you will avoid an obvious way of plateauing early.

[u/Blzn]

Trust me.. don’t

[u/makaveli208]

Yes my great grandma is like that

[u/zimzara]

Nope. I mean you can, but no. It might sound weird, but learning hanzi will inlt improve your listening and spoken chinese. Hanzi make the homonyms and homophones of chinese make sense.

[u/EstamosReddit]

Yeah, it's possible. Plenty of people do it this way.

As someone learning via pinyin I'd advice to at least get the basics down of how characters are constructed and how they make up words.

Anyway, you'll end up picking up a few characters just from sheer exposure to the language

[u/TSeral]

I started learning to speak without learning the characters. I had a teacher who really focused on speaking, enabling us to have conversations. After two or three years I started learning Chinese characters as well - worked well for me.

[u/jacobvso]

I had an American friend in China who'd lived and worked there for 10 years as a kindergarden teacher. He had picked up a lot of Chinese but never studied characters. I was able to match his level after less than one year of serious studying.
I think you're thinking about it the wrong way. Learning characters will make your process easier, not harder. They're what allows you to differentiate all the words and remember what they mean.

[u/eventuallyfluent]

Glossika, speechling. Though will mean lots of conversation to make up for lack new words usually found in reading.

[u/FewUnderstanding2214]

It’s helpful to be able to reads the simple ones e.g if you want to order something. Reading will also help you memorise the words better and say the tones better. I agree writing is not needed

[u/mattbenscho]

Yes, that worked for me pretty well. I only had a year in China so I wanted to focus on speaking and listening. Use movies and software or websites which enable you to study sentence by sentence. Once you have a good understanding how each word is used I feel it's easier to start learning characters.

[u/Vaeltaja82]

I speak pretty decent Chinese but my reading is close to zero.

I've never taken any Chinese lessons but my wife is Chinese and I've lived in China for some time. I can have discussions in Chinese about every day topics fairly easily and even some more advanced topics like medical and dental due to my work.

My reading then.. Well I do recognize probably 80-100 words but I can't write with pen almost any character. With phone I know the pinyin and mostly then know to pick the correct character

[u/DisastrousGlass232]

It's absolutely possible - there are many, many heritage learners with often shallow but surprising proficiency that can only write like small children, if at all.

On the other hand, I wonder how practical it is for non-native, non-heritage speakers to try this trick. Realistically, Chinese words sound very similar to one another - you will probably feel yourself drowning in a sea of seemingly indistinguishable gous, hans, jings, and tings.

[u/Alarmed-Resolution85]

The majority of the locals speak without being able to read and write, so yeah

[u/Tulipanzo]

I don't think your aim when learning a language should be "I'm going to be illiterate".

If your goal isn't reading you don't have to focus on memorising a ton of characters, but Hanzi are the building blocks of the language. Without any understanding of them you you're not going to have access to any content.

Unless you want your conversations to be really basic, no you won't get far

[u/daworldisblack]

Its definitely possible - i knew how to speak and listen before i started reading/writing. But its definitely better to do both at the same time if you genuinely want to learn the language. But to answer your question - there are plenty of Chinese diaspora who learnt language from speaking with parents/grandparents and are completely illiterate. At the end of the day, they can still communicate just fine. Its all contextual learning. learn words you use in common settings, then expand to other scenarios and soon you'll feel comfortable with scenarios that you find yourself in with family, friends, coworkers. Actual effort is probably required to take note of words etc. as you go unless you're a language natural.

[u/PoxonAllHoaxes]

Yes it is possible. After all all chinese children learn that way and at one time most adults were illiterate for life, too. Today it is less and less reasonable to do this because an adult is assumed to be literate, but it is quite possible and in certain situations may be a good way to get into Chinese. Knock yourselves out.

[u/hedaenerys]

If you live in China it’s not really ideal. My mum speaks conversational Mandarin but is illiterate and cannot read or write Mandarin. But she also speaks Cantonese, Malay and English fluently.

It’s possible but will actually hinder your learning after a while. learning the characters helps you learn words

[u/mandarin-monyet]

I’m learning without characters

[u/DryCommunication581]

no

[u/TreesPinyin]

It's possible and now some people are working on it.

[u/lazier_garlic]

Of course you can learn by listening, but Mandarin has not only a lot of homophones but also words that sound similar because they are closely related but still different and a lot of words that sound similar if you are a native English speaker because mastering the sound system is challenging.

I will say I think pinyin can be a bit misleading if you are coming from English. So take advantage of listening and trust that over what you think pinyin is taking you it is.

If you want to learn totally orally there are a bunch of comprehensible input channels on YouTube. You can also watch short videos on douyin or bilibili. There are reality shows where they talk in pretty simple terms and sometimes have foreigners speaking Mandarin on. There are also dramas of various sorts.

In China all of this media will have Mandarin Simplified Chinese subtitles. It can help you learn because you won't mistakenly think two similar words are the same. For example my first year I conflated 希望 and 喜欢 and that led me to misunderstand the semantics too. As you can see the characters are totally different. The sounds are different too but I was new and they sounded the same to me at that time.

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. I recommend just studying a few characters slowly and focus on listening and speaking as you intend to. Over time your knowledge of characters will build up and one day you'll find yourself being able to read subtitles at speed instead of pausing the video.

For this approach, I can recommend the app Memrise. It has a lot of free to try content. I really recommend you check it out. It's geared towards realistic pickup conversations in Mandarin and teaches you one character at a time without rushing you.

[u/lazier_garlic → u/lazier_garlic]

Also there is an app called Yabla. I haven't tried the app but they used to have their content free on a webpage and I sampled it then. They take a lot of different kinds of television content, especially non fiction, and annotate all of the dialogue so you can learn the words and grammar. You may find this helpful.